In February, Salesforce turned its World Tour Sydney conference into a virtual event in just 10 days. Here\u2019s what we learned, along with tips for how you can do the same for your company.<\/i><\/p>\n
Last month, due to the unprecedented situation with COVID-19, we spent 10 days pivoting Salesforce World Tour Sydney into a fully virtual event. This annual conference is Salesforce\u2019s largest in the Asia Pacific region, attracting around 10,000 onsite attendees and taking more than six months to organize. Our reimagined event attracted almost 13,000 registered attendees and 80,000 Salesforce Live views. <\/p>\n
As other companies face similar challenges, they too are pivoting<\/a> flagship events to virtual spaces. This article is for those who are making the difficult decision to transform large-scale events from in-person to online. We share what we learned and how our experience can help you.<\/p>\n Despite the hurdles we faced on the path to this monumental shift, we realized there was an opportunity to do something special. Live streaming and conferencing tools are more available than ever before, and online events are far more affordable to produce. There\u2019s also no indication online gatherings are a passing trend: Cisco predicts by 2022, 82% of all internet traffic will be video<\/a>.<\/p>\n Derek Laney, Salesforce\u2019s Head of Solutions and Product Marketing, Asia Pacific, says his team has been talking about doing online events for years. He was excited to replan the conference, despite the challenge ahead. <\/p>\n \u201cThere was no precedent to what we were doing,\u201d he says. \u201cSo there was no reason for us not to try something new.\u201d<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with four things to keep in mind as you strategize: <\/p>\n Get leadership buy-in with visuals<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Develop new teams as needed<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Scrum often<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Ruthlessly prioritize and reprioritize every day<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n The Asia Pacific (APAC) Marketing Team oversaw the creation of a series of work streams for World Tour Sydney. Each one focused on a different aspect of the event: content, engagement, and communications. Other subgroups covered online streaming, live demos, customer management, and more.<\/p>\n Regular scrums ensured everyone knew what deliverables were most pressing. There were meetings with headquarters in the U.S. every morning and with the local APAC team in the afternoon. \u201cWith the time difference, we had people working almost round the clock,\u201d says Renata Bertram, Vice President, Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) Marketing. <\/p>\n Bertam adds getting buy-in from the very top right from the start was an important part of their success. \u201cWe learned early on the importance of creating visuals to help people understand what the event was going to look like and what our production values would be,\u201d she says. \u201cFor example, we built slides that replicated looking at a presentation through a screen.\u201d<\/p>\n Ruthless prioritization was key. \u201cI stopped answering everyone’s questions so we could focus on prioritization,\u201d recounts Laney. \u201cWe didn\u2019t want to be overwhelmed with the amount of challenges that we had to solve.\u201d<\/p>\n 1. Know the facts and assemble your team<\/b><\/h2>\n
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